Dilbert 1, Scientists 0.

A communications group at Yale University has put out a video that seems to be a rebuttal to a Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams poking fun at climate scientists and their misplaced confidence in models. The video is full of impressive-looking scientists talking about charts and data and whatnot. It probably cost a lot to make and certainly involved a lot of time and effort. The most amazing thing, however, is that it actually proves the points being made in the Dilbert cartoon. Rather than debunking the cartoon, the scientists acted it out in slow motion.

The Dilbert cartoon begins with a climate scientist saying “human activity is warming the earth and will lead to a global catastrophe.” When challenged to explain how he knows that, he says they start with basic physical principles plus observations about the climate, which they then feed into models, pick and choose some of the outputs, then feed those into economic models, and voila. When asked, what if I don’t trust the economic models, the scientist retreats to an accusation of denialism.

The Yale video ends in exactly the same way. After a few minutes of what I will, for the moment, call “scientific information,” we see climatologist Andrew Dessler appear at the 4:28 mark to say “It’s inarguable, although some people still argue it – heh, heh.” As in, ah those science deniers.

What exactly is “inarguable”? By selective editing we are led to believe that everything said in the video is based on multiple independent lines of evidence carrying such overwhelming force that no rational observer could dispute it. Fine, let’s go to the 2:38 mark and watch someone named Sarah Myhre tell us what this inarguable science says.

“It’s irrefutable evidence that there are major consequences that come with climate warming, and that we take these Earth systems to be very stable, we take them for granted, and they’re not stable, they’re deeply unstable when you perturb the carbon system in the atmosphere.”

How does she know this? From models of course. These claims are not rooted in observations but in examining the entrails of model projections. But she has to pick and choose her models because they don’t all say what she claims they say. Some models show very little sensitivity to greenhouse gases. If we put the low-sensitivity results into economic models the results show that the economic impacts of warming are very low and possible even negative (i.e. a net benefit). And the section of the IPCC report that talks about the consequences of warming says:

For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers (medium evidence, high agreement). Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change.

It goes on to show (Figure 10-1) that at low levels of warming the net economic effects are zero or positive. As to the climate being “deeply unstable” there’s hardly any point trying to debate that since these are not well-defined scientific words, but simple reflection on human experience will tell you that the climate system is pretty stable, at least on decadal and century time scales. The main thing to note is that she is claiming that changes to atmospheric CO2 levels have big warming effects on the climate and will cause a global catastrophe. And the only way she knows this is from looking at the outputs of models and ignoring the ones that look wrong to her. Granted she isn’t bald and doesn’t have a little beard, but otherwise she is almost verbatim the scientist in the cartoon.

Much of what she says in the video is unsubstantiated and sloppy. For instance she talks (2:14) about paleoclimatic indicators like tree rings, ice cores and sediment cores as if they are handy records of past climate conditions without acknowledginganyof theknownproblemsextracting climate information from such noisy sources.

Her most telling comment was the Freudian slip at 1:06 when she says “There is incredible agreement about the drivers of climate science.” What she meant (and quickly corrected herself to say) was “climate change.” But her comment is revealing as regards the incredible agreement—i.e. groupthink –that drives climate science, and the individuals who do the driving. Myhre’s Freudian slip comes right after a clip in which Michael Mann emphatically declares that there are dozens of lines of evidence that all come together, “telling us the same thing,” adding “that’s how science works.” Really? The lines of evidence regarding climate do not all lead to one uniform point of view, nor is that how science works. If that’s how science worked there would be no need for research. But that’s how activists see it, and that’s the view they impose to drive climate science along in service of the activist agenda. As Dr. Myhre herself wrote in a recent op-ed:

Our job is not to objectively document the decline of Earth’s biodiversity and humanity, so what does scientific leadership look like in this hot, dangerous world? We don’t need to all agree with each other – dissent is a healthy component of the scientific community. But, we do need to summon our voices and start shouting from rooftops: “We have options”, “We don’t have to settle for cataclysm”.

Got that? The job of scientists is not objectively to gather and present evidence, but to impose an alarmist view and yell it from the rooftops. At least according to Sarah Myhre, Ph.D..

The video opens with a straw man argument: climate science is all just made up in computer models about the future, and it’s all just based on simulations. This is then refuted, rather easily, with clips of scientists listing some of the many observational data sets that exist. Whoopee. That wasn’t even the point of the Dilbert cartoon, it was just a straw man made up by the interviewer. Then, in the process of presenting responses, the video flits back and forth between lists of observational evidence and statements that are based on the outputs of models, as if the former prove the latter. For instance, when Myhre says (2:45—2:55) that the climate systems is “deeply unstable” to perturbations in the carbon “system” (I assume she meant cycle) the video then cuts to Andrew Dessler (2:55) talking about satellite measurements, back to Myhre on paleo indicators, then to Carl Mears and Dessler (3:11) talking about sea ice trends. None of those citations support Myhre’s claims about instability, but the selective editing creates the impression that they do.

Another example is a sequence starting at 1:14 and going to about 2:06, in which various speakers lists different data sets, glossing over different spatial and time scales, measurement systems, etc. Then an assertion is slipped in at 2:07 by Ben Santer to the effect that the observed warming can’t be explained by natural causes. Then back to Myhre listing paleoclimate indicators and Mann describing boreholes. The impression created is that all these data types prove the attribution claim made by Santer. But they do no such thing. The data sets only record changes: claims about the mechanism behind them are based on modeling work, namely when climate models can’t simulate 20th century warming without incorporating greenhouse gas forcing.

So in a sense, the video doesn’t even refute the straw man it set up. It’s not that climate science consists only of models: obviously there are observations too. But all the attribution claims about the climatic effects of greenhouse gases are based on models. If the scientists being interviewed had any evidence otherwise, they didn’t present any.

Now suppose that they are correct in their assertion that all the lines of evidence agree. All the data sets, in Mann’s words, are telling us the same thing. In that case, looking at one is as good as looking at any of the others.

Ignore for a moment the selective focus on declining Arctic sea ice data while ignoring the expansion of Antarctic sea ice. And ignore the strange quotation from Henry Pollock (3:23—3:41) about how ice doesn’t ask any questions or read the newspaper: it just melts. Overlaid on his words is a satellite video showing the summer 2016 Arctic sea ice melt. Needless to say, had the filmmaker kept the video running a few seconds more, into the fall, we’d have seen it re-freeze. Presumably the ice doesn’t read or ask questions in the fall either, it just freezes. This proves what exactly?

Anyway, back to our assumption that all the data sets agree and say the same thing. And what is it they tell us? Many key data sets indicate that climate models are wrong, and in particular that they overstate the rate of warming, (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc.). So according to the uniformity principle so strongly enunciated in the video, all the evidence points in the same direction: the models aren’t very good. And by implication, statements made based on the models aren’t very reliable.

There’s another irony in the video’s assertions of uniformity in climate science. At the 3:55 mark Michael Mann announces that there’s a consensus because independent teams of scientists all come at the problem from different angles and come up with the same answers. He’s clearly referring to the model-based inferences about the drivers of climate change. And the models are, indeed, converging to become more and more similar. The problem is that in the process they are becoming less like the actual climate. Oops.

So how did the video do refuting Scott Adams’ cartoon? He joked that scientists warning of catastrophe invoke the authority of observational data when they are really making claims based on models. Check. He joked that they ignore on a post hoc basis the models that don’t look right to them. Check. He joked that their views presuppose the validity of models that reasonable people could doubt. Check. And he joked that to question any of this will lead to derision and the accusation of being a science denier. Check. In other words, the Yale video sought to rebut Adams’ cartoon and ended up being a documentary version of it.

Yale is definitely one of the leading lights in the politically correct, “safe” spaces, pantywaist, offense-taking, free-speech hating, speech-code loving, oppressive, fascist, baby-coddling movement in American Academe.

Bryan A, I know I used a litany of adjectives, but they were all so perfect, I couldn’t bring myself to edit any of them away.
I don’t know if you saw this, but both the faculty master who got screamed at by that aggrieved Yale minority student, and his wife, who wrote the e-mail that triggered her, recently capitulated and apologized to the entire student body, rather than stand up for free speech and free expression. They refused to defend their own ideas and notions that Yale students ought to be able to tolerate seeing some white guy wearing a Mexican sombrero at a private Halloween party.
Nope, they caved, the shark has been jumped, and in fact, the shark has swallowed our hero whole. And now it’s time for some Sharknado style chainsaw action (I bet you haven’t often seen comments combining topics of Yale speech codes and Sharknado references – Brad Keyes, eat your heart out).

Add ” humophobic”,as in blaming every negative phenomenon real or imagined on people and desiring and acting in ways to destroy as much human life on planet earth as quickly as possible. That would of course be the outcome of removing the reliable and affordable energy foundation that keeps us happily clinging to this spinning orb.

“The video is full of impressive-looking scientists talking about charts and data and whatnot.The video is full of impressive-looking scientists talking about charts and data and whatnot.”
Non-contexualized and/or cherry-picked data basically have become the equivalent of stigmata that career scientists (kept women) use to mesmerize the faithful.

Yale has become a red flag for observing the dry rot of certain Ivy League campuses. Think twice about paying anything to send your kids there. I know others that caught on at the last minute and chose elsewhere.

Of course the old saying is “You get what you pay for’ where it should probably be ” You rarely get more than you pay for.” You might not have to spend very much to send your kids there but is the objective for the kids to get a good useful college education that will enhance their earning power and satisfaction in life or just a piece of paper claiming they went there?

I have a B.S. degree from Cornell (’74), and there was a time when I was proud of it. Now I’m more embarrassed than proud. Oh well, but I can still claim that I was an engineer nerd during that time (true).

Does anyone else feel how…bizarre this is? I mean, its a stinking comic strip. They feel the need to round up dozens of scientists, and film an elaborate video, to refute the “claims” in…a comic strip…
Dilbert makes fun of corporations. What if the CEOs of Pepsi, General Motors, and Apple got together to spend a million bucks refuting his cartoon showing CEOs pointy haired narcissistic idiots. The mere existence of this film would prove his point.
This is perfect documentation that climate scientists are narcissistic idiots.

I think it shows that this is a religion, not a science. Mocking of it cannot be tolerated.
I watched the video. They said it was getting warmer. Nobody explained how our 3% contribution to the CO2 entering the atmosphere makes any difference.

I nominate Dilbert for the Pogo award…For those of you too young to know the Pogo cartoon was the only one to make fun of J Edgar Hoover during the height of his totalitarian stranglehold on Washington DC. Before he died NOBODY else dared especially in Hollywood

This is good:
“Atmospheric maintenance is an ideological practice.
“In the post-Paris COP-21 world, in most Integrated Assessment Models, the mythical target of 2 °C, or even 1.5 °C is held sacrosanct, In order to reach this target, modelers adjust carbon budgets artificially by adopting “negative-emission technologies.” This a euphemism for carbon dioxide capture and reliable storage on a planetary level – a suite of geo-engineering technologies that are currently at little more than a conceptual stage of development. Nowhere is this more evident than in the IPCC’s scenario database. Of the 400 scenarios that have a 50% or better chance of resulting in no more than 2 °C warming, 344 assume the successful and large-scale deployment of negative-emission technologies. Even more worryingly, in all 56 scenarios without negative emissions, global emissions peak around 2010, which is contrary to available emissions data. In such cases, scientists must make their assumptions transparent and defensible, however politically uncomfortable the conclusions.” –J R Fleminghttp://web.colby.edu/jfleming/author/jfleming/

Great Analysis. I am always amazed at the lack of Science knowledge in even some Scientist. I think when you take your knowledge and have it guided by a philosophic or theology belief. How can you follow the evidence and and then ignore the evidence based on a bias. I myself (a science teacher) was concerned when global warming first appeared in the literature and thought I better look at this deeper. I use to teach a lesson on Pseudoscience and I used a video by Bill Nye who said though out the video, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”. Long story short, I looked at claim and in not time saw the lack of proof and am still following the evidence.

I am always amazed how many “climate believers who know science” will claim a trend line is NOT a model. Any Google search out there shows thousands of entries clearly stating trend lines ARE models. Yet true believers still insist a model is not a model.

The Yale climate video is an example of what happens when you take the philosophy out of natural philosophy (science) – namely examining the foundations of logic and knowledge-creation. Yet given the state of arts faculties in modern universities, it is hard to argue in favour of science students being required to take a philosophy course, although some might get a course from a good prof. Sigh!

Okay, I’m gonna to do a video story-board now:
NARRATOR: “We know the Earth is warming unnaturally. ”
[show a person with a PhD]
[toss in authoritative words like “data sets”, “tree rings”, or more obscure things that sound technical]
NARRATOR: “There is converging evidence, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah …”
[show some colorful graphs, NASA photos — make sure the name, “NASA”, is plainly visibly, though]
[video clip of another PhD or famous scientist making passionate plea]
In other words, who needs a cohesive presentation of evidence for intelligent viewers, when you can get people with PhD’s to swear that there is a crisis at hand?
Way to go, Yale ! … keeping the standards of the Ivy League high.

My most recent impact with a Yale person was at the Heartland Conference in D.C. The speaker, a Yale economist, had to know he was speaking to a hostile room, yet he became so impassioned about how “We must do something NOW to stop climate change….” I swear he was in tears when he stepped down. Maybe it is something in the water in Hartford that causes this insanity.
PMK

Just don’t confuse either with Bridgeport. Reminds me of an old Doonesbury cartoon where Rick Redfern has fallen to the disgraceful level of writing for People magazine. He is sitting on the edge of the bed still in his pajamas and staring at the wall. He says “Do you have any idea what it’s like to wake up and realized you’re an editor for People magazine?”. Joanie thinks a minute and replies: “Well, I woke up in Bridgeport once.”

Just an impression from one APL conference there , but New Haven struck me as the most class divided city I’ve ever visited . Actually it’s the only city I’ve ever noticed such a thing .
It seemed to be Yale versus the commoners — a cliff not a hill .

It sounds like he learned at the feet of Thomas Dodd (a former senator from that area). Dodd gave a similar impassioned speech on the Senate floor after he was nailed for misusing campaign funds. People who knew the score were shaking their heads for a long time afterwards. Maybe it is the water, although I would opt for natural accouterments that come with our sociobiology.

The video illustrates all that is wrong with climate ‘science’. And the clowns don’t realize it. Dessler is the one who ‘proved’ positive cloud feedback with an r^2 of 0.02! Mann is the one who ‘invented’ centered principle components, which automatically produces hockey sticks from red noise (autocorrelated time series having classical red noise).
Yale needs to learn the first rule of holes: when in one wanting out, first stop digging.

Rud,
I believe that Mann’s dubious mathematical flim-flam was termed “short centring” by McIntyre. In reading the “Hockey Stick Illusion” I was dumbfounded that Mann could get away with a mathematical manipulation that was so transparently wrong. Montford was not a scientist or mathematician but he showed that an intelligent layman could understand and explain the manipulation in a clear and understandable manner.

He also blatantly cherry picked tree ring locations that supported his hypothesis and ignored more representative locations, including using “data” that was geographically close and ignored altitude effects. After some of this data was clearly shown to be misleading he used it again in his follow up paper. In my opinion no one in their right mind could say this was not outright fraud.

When all else fails appeal to authority. Only a “denier” would reject authority.
I guess the best that can be said is that the Climate Catastrophists are caught in Noble Cause Corruption.
John P. Crank and Michael A. Caldero (2000) define noble cause corruption as: “Corruption committed in the name of good ends.”
Yet, corruption is never good even if the practitioners think they have a good end in view.

The AGW movement is a conspiracy of self interest.
The Socialists get power out of the destruction of Capitalism
The Environmentalists get power and prestige from the new paradigm of “saving the Earth” at the expense of the people living on it
The politicians benefit from the crisis by acquiring more power
The climate scientists get jobs and prestige by claiming to be authorities on something that is difficult to deny-climate is changing! It always has!
If they succeed it is the death of Western civilization and impoverishment for the world. And the climate will not even take notice!

What an interesting comment.
We live in an old cottage, in South East London ((well Dartford, soon to be another London Borough) next to what used to be an orchard, it’s’ now bounded by a block of low rise council flats.
When we moved here 30 years ago, every year we looked forward to the emergence of stag beetles in the spring, terrifying looking things dive bombing you, but perfectly harmless.
I believe they procreate in, and emerge from dead wood, rotting trees etc. However, over the past 30 years the old orchard has been meticulously groomed and pruned by the local council, so it looks nice and is ‘safe’.
I haven’t seen a stag beetle for the last 10 years. Nothing to do with climate or anything else, simply that Health and Safety comes before conservation. Five years ago, a perfectly natural habitat was tidied up before it could even attract stag beetles; a storm brought down an enormous conifer. No harm done, but it wasn’t left to rot, nor were the ancient apple trees that were chainsawed because the council deems it necessary to tidy up after mother nature.
No wonder the stag beetle is endangered, we won’t effing well give it somewhere to live!

“These claims are not rooted in observations but in examining the entrails of model projections.”
This comment is highly relevant. Prognosticators’ use of models extends back thousands of years. Liver models were used by the ancient Babylonians to foretell the future based on data inputs from animal entrails..
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruspex
“One Babylonian clay model of a sheep’s liver, dated between 1900 and 1600 BC, is conserved in the British Museum.[3] The model was used for divination, which was important to Mesopotamian medicine. This practice was conducted by priests and seers who looked for signs in the stars, or in the organs of sacrificed animals, to tell them things about a patient’s illness. Wooden pegs were placed in the holes of the clay tablet to record features found in a sacrificed animal’s liver. The seer then used these features to predict the course of a patient’s illness.”

No, the Dervishes use dance as a form of worship, not divination. Gyromancy’s closest equivalent most people are familiar with would be a oija board. Just with one person making themselves dizzy instead of a bunch of people moving a pointer around.

Haruspicy has been refined for the modern day Climate Shamans!
Behold:
“Already, commentators are asking if global warming is to blame. In particular, some are wondering if the direction of the Jet Stream is being altered by Arctic ice melt. Others are speculating that natural variations, such as the “Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation”, might be responsible for recent evolutions.
However, most of this reportage has been second-hand. Unprecedentedly, I had direct access to the meteorologists concerned, as I was in Exeter in spirit form, and I managed to speak to the principal actors.
First, I asked Stephen Belcher, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, whether the recent extended winter was related to global warming. Shaking his famous “ghost stick”, and fingering his trademark necklace of sharks’ teeth and mammoth bones, the loin-clothed Belcher blew smoke into a conch, and replied,
“Here come de heap big warmy. Bigtime warmy warmy. Is big big hot. Plenty big warm burny hot. Hot! Hot hot! But now not hot. Not hot now. De hot come go, come go. Now Is Coldy Coldy. Is ice. Hot den cold. Frreeeezy ice til hot again. Den de rain. It faaaalllll. Make pasty.”
Startled by this sobering analysis, I moved on to Professor Rowan Sutton, Climate Director of NCAS at the University of Reading. Professor Sutton said that many scientists are, as of this moment, examining the complex patterns in the North Atlantic, and trying to work out whether the current run of inclement European winters will persist.
When pressed on the particular outlook for the British Isles. Professor Sutton shook his head, moaned eerily unto the heavens, and stuffed his fingers into the entrails of a recently disembowelled chicken, bought fresh from Waitrose in Teignmouth.
Hurling the still-beating heart of the chicken into a shallow copper salver, Professor Sutton inhaled the aroma of burning incense, then told the Telegraph: “The seven towers of Agamemnon tremble. Much is the discord in the latitude of Gemini. When, when cry the sirens of doom and love. Speckly showers on Tuesday.”
It’s a pretty stark analysis, and not without merit. There are plenty of climate change scientists who are equally forthright on the possibilities of change, or no change, and of more hot, or less hot, or of rain, or no rain, or of Britain turning into the Sahara by next weekend, or instead becoming a freezing cold Frostyworld ruled by a strange, glistening ice-queen – crucially, it all depends on the time of day you ask them, and whether or not they had asparagus the day before.
So who are we to believe? For a final word, I turned to the greatest climate change scientist of all, Dr David Viner, one-time senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, who predicted in 2000 that, within a few years, winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event”.
However, he was trapped under a glacier in Stockport, so was unable to comment at the time the Telegraph went to press.”

It is obvious to the public that science is in trouble. Everyone will have noticed that nutrition studies contradict themselves on a daily basis. Now we have popular books like Rigor Mortis that show that the majority of research is bogus.
Most research papers cannot be replicated even by the original authors. link Science has become demonstrably corrupt and unreliable. Why should we believe that climate science is, in any way, special in that regard.

““Scentists” are mass-produced by “universities””
Crucially, our education model allows self selecting of who will be what.
It aint like the smartest people are sought then assigned to the most important and vexing tasks.

It’s simply not true that “the majority of research is bogus”; in fact that kind of sloppy overgeneralization is on par with the Yale video. Examples that I’m familiar with: molecular biology, combinatorial optimization (except perhaps the wilder shores of metaheuristics), even parts of cognitive psychology. And I’m sure the same is true for many areas of physics (or don’t you think there’s a Higgs Boson?)

I should add that overgeneralizations of this sort tend to obfuscate the real and serious problems that we’re facing. There are some amazing and dismaying things that are happening in this culture, and the AGW hysteria is a telling reflection of this. But these things are happening side by side with serious endeavors.

rw
what is true, however, is that science is more often wrong than right. Were it not, there would be no need for experiments.
What the concerned climate community is witnessing (including sceptics) in my opinion, is every experiment ever conceived on the subject being proclaimed as correct, the vast majority of them being alarmist experiments. And that’s just not possible if science is as objective as it claims.
As a layman, and a profound expert in my field, I can honestly say that, to me, it looks like the tail wagging the dog. An objective is identified and experiments are designed to prove that objective (sorry, clumsy layman’s terms). Whether that is right or not, I have no idea, but as a very clever boss of mine once pointed out to me, one man’s perception, is his reality.
And again, as a layman, I’ll make this observation: climate alarmist’s accidentally stumbled upon politics as a route to success. And when you think about it, that’s a really clever ploy to follow through with. I, and most of the UK, and the western world, would instantly hold our hands up when confronted with a scientific debate, and say “I’m not qualified to contribute”. However politics demands no qualifications, so everyone who cares to state an opinion, is an expert.
And yet science seems little more than a careful and (usually) factual process of elimination and confirmation. An extremely complicated process when the minutia is examined, but nonetheless, a straightforward process.
Politics is nothing more than a nest of vipers (with apologies to vipers) with no demonstrable expertise. Whoever shouts loudest, wins.
Life is, in fact, just one big experiment, distorted by politicians.

If it can’t be replicated it’s bogus. If it can’t be replicated even by the author, it’s really bogus. Here’s another link
It’s important to note that even as there is more reporting of bad research, nobody is stepping up in defence of what’s going on.

rw,
“(or don’t you think there’s a Higgs Boson?)”
I can think there is, or think there isn’t . . but I’m not really in an endless school exam such that thinking such things makes me a rational person, or not.
It seems to me, nobody special, that science has been deified in a sense, and any advance in any field/realm of human endeavor is credited to the almighty Science God, if any aspect at all of the field/realm can be attributed in any way to any scientific anything. I have heard all my life that Science brought us this, and Science gave us that, and if we but revere (and lavishly feed ; ) the great beneficent God of Science a wondrous paradise will surely be our reward …
And, naturally it seems to me, leeches, egomaniacs, con artists and control freaks of every sort have responded to the opportunities that hyping and idolization opened up . . if you build it, they will come ; )

John,
Science has allowed population growth from one billion people c. AD 1804 to seven billion c. 2011, while at the same time making us fabulously wealthy on average compared to the turn of the 19th century, and living much longer, thanks to a drastic drop in infant mortality.
Your mythical “God”, OTOH, has brought war, famine and pestilence, with the false promise of eternal life. Science really has extended and increased life, without the fake racketeering of religion. precisely because it is not a religion based upon faith, but a process based upon doubt.
Science should almost always be found wrong. That’s how the process works until in a few cases its conclusions stand up as objective reality, such as the fact that earth goes around the sun, contrary to the Bible.
The history of modern science begins in 1543 (when there were fewer than 500 million people) with Copernicus’ and Vesalius’ rebellion against the authority of the Bible and ancient philosophers. Copernicus opposed the consensus upheld by his own Church and most classical pagan scientists. Vesalius too rebelled against the authority of Galen, in favor of looking at the actual world. That revolution against authority-based consensus continues today.

John,
It has absolutely nothing at all to do with worship. Just the facts.
The false God which you worship has caused war, famine and pestilence, with nothing but fairly tales and phony promises in return. It’s a protection racket.
Science has given us clean water, abundant food, greater health from medicines, shelter and clothing, to name but a few goods. My company’s evolution machines are evolving new antibiotics as I write, to overcome microbial resistance.
Or do you have a different explanation for the sources of these wondrous benefits? Maybe on your planet of alternative reality.
Science has also freed the human mind from the fear-engendering myths with which priests and politicians have tried to control the people. It has also at times helped evil purveyors of belief systems, both religious and ideological to try to suppress freedom. That struggle continues.

Readers, please note the schizophrenic quality of Chimp’s . . bitching;
“Your mythical “God”, OTOH, has brought war, famine and pestilence, with the false promise of eternal life.”
All that stuff was brought by a mythical God? Including “the false promise of eternal life”? How in the world could this man know such a thing? Well, through imagination worship, or course. He saw it in his mind, and he believes ; )

Great example of the anything that has anything to with scientific anything, was given us by Science the virtual God;
“Science has given us clean water, abundant food, greater health from medicines, shelter and clothing, to name but a few goods.”
Not lots of people (many of whom were not scientists) but literally given to us by the great God called Science. The same pretend God by the way that is actually a method, brought to us by Christians (initially and predominately throughout) . . but Chimp does not credit that God with such things, because that God is not at his beck and call, like his images are . . which is what he’s really bitching about, it seem to me. Any God that does not forever shower us with warm sunshine and gentle rains like vegetables, is seen as unworthy of respect, by hedonistic self worshipers . . as they seem to me to tell it anyway.

I can be sure to a high degree of confidence because biologically humans are no different from meicrobes. In fact, microbes have a higher degree of “immortality” than do we. The point, which you seem willfully incapable of grasping, is that there is no rational reason for imagining an afterlife. It has no physical basis. It’s a belief on blind faith, and in Protestant theology, that’s the whole point.
The examples I gave were all of advances which without doubt were provided by science. No God of any kind required. If you’d like, I can show you the individual scientists involved. God, as always, did nothing. If it were left to religion, 75% of us would all die within five years of birth.
The burden of proof is on you to show how religion contributed to any of those advances.
“God” is not a method. If it were, then you could point to how it has ever produced anything of concrete value, besides art and music, which would have been made to honor Odin as much as the Near Eastern deity transplanted to Europe. Comforting the afflicted is just part of the sc@m.
Christian hymns have their roots in pagan hymns. Ditto art.
As I said, science has indubitably provided all those good things. Religion OTOH, oppression, war, famine and pestilence. Plus the false promise of a better life after death.
Yeah, right. As if. What a racket.

??
“I can be sure to a high degree of confidence because biologically humans are no different from meicrobes.”
??
Not in your imagination, I guess . . In reality-land we are quite different in many ways. But, that’s not even relevant, let alone dispositive, to the question of whether of not that is a false promise . . It’s pretzel logic to me; If We are similar in some ways to microbes, then the promise of eternal life must be false . . ??
“In fact, microbes have a higher degree of “immortality” than do we.”
On Evolution/Naturalism, nothing alive has ever died, in that sense, but the promise is not that the sort of life microbes have in common with us will live eternally;Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
“The point, which you seem willfully incapable of grasping, is that there is no rational reason for imagining an afterlife. It has no physical basis. It’s a belief on blind faith, and in Protestant theology, that’s the whole point.”
Not for you to believe, perhaps, but I am not you. I have witnessed/experienced things that did not conform to the “Naturalism only” worldview I once held too . . And what I experienced was very clearly pointing directly to a certain Book. You can imagine it was all imaginary, and speak as though it must be so, based on what you imagine, but that’s just more blatant imagination worship, though you don’t seem to grasp that it can’t be you actually observing such a thing . .
I suspect this sort of *One’s own observations/experiences are not worthy to be treated as valid evidence* is a significant aspect of what He’s putting us through. Logically speaking, no one ever has any other sort of evidence to work with. It all comes to us through the same single viewpoint, and if it’s not trustworthy, it really doesn’t matter what it shows you of others . . they could be illusions too.
Think of all the people who put faith in what “climate scientists” tell them, as though that’s somehow going to magically get them past that single viewpoint limitation, and you will catch a glimpse of how I see you, Chimp, as you speak of things you imagine must be myths, while thinking there are all sorts of experts there to back you up somehow . . Nope, it’s just you, and each of them is just them.
“The examples I gave were all of advances which without doubt were provided by science.”
Someone was testing something and clothes came into being? Amazing . .

“Wow. Awesome.
Bringing ancient imaginary writings to a science fight.”
I swear, many people cannot tell the difference between the imaginary and the real . . those writings are certainly quite real, and played a huge role in history, but this person imagines they are not, apparently. Most notable scientists believed those writings were something very special, but there is this other science, that is not something people do . . so, sure, those writings are irrelevant to that imaginary science (which as I say, is essentially a God to many),
But, the question I responded to was about belief, and science, and it wasn’t me who brought up those writings . . I merely responded to what was said to me . .
You don’t like that, special snowflake? Too much freedom for your taste?

It will be impossible to win the argument against catastrophic climate change with Climate Scientist. When arguing we assume rigorously tested theory’s and observations must be used, their ammunition is exaggeration, hyperbole, magnification, rhetoric and models. Cannot slay the invisible monster. Only way to end it is to cut off the funding.

I’m actually thankful for people like Mann and Dessler… if I didn’t have glaring examples like these guys of just how poor scientific integrity is today I’d believe a lot more claims w/o questioning them. And any studies from Yale (and Harvard) are almost automatically dismissed. These institutions are really awful when it comes to nutritional studies as well.

when it comes to nutritional studies << I'd love some links, or references…I deal with people in rigid belief systems with no understanding that the McGovern committees in the 70s determined what we should eat. Love to see more info to either support of disprove what I've read. thanks

PC: The egg/heart disease kerfuffle is a detailed example in The Arts of Truth. Covers both US and UK ‘studies’ and the epidemiological and physiological science fails in that saga. Lots of specific references.
Have also researched the gluten craziness, but for family reasons so not yet written up for public consumption–significant other has anxiety disorder brought about by wasp sting anaphylactic shock. She almost died. A quack physicians assistant claimed was caused by gluten based on wacky Dr. Perlmutter theory. Gluten triggers ciliac disease, a (probably heredetary) immune disorder irritation of the small intestine lining caused by undigested or partly digested gluten protein. Nothing to do with the brain, as all proteins are fully digested into constituent amino acids for absorption into the blood stream. Only amino acids reach the brain. Quack physician.

ristvan,
F.Y.I. If you haven’t gotten there yet look up “glyphosate + seneff”. Dr. Stephanie Seneff has written several papers on the effects of glyphosate, starting around 2013 with several including the terms “glyphosate, pathways to modern disease” in their titles. To me at least her “Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases” seems to tie it to major changes in the gut biome which are thought to have effects throughout the body.
Around 15 years ago, after returning from 6 years in the Caribbean I came down with what appeared to be one or more major vitamin deficiencies. It took about 8 months for me to finally tie it to an allergy to wheat and finally anything containing gluten (I even had to quit drinking scotch, which I love).
Also, it looks like they have now defined something called “gluten sensitivity” that is apparently not heredetary.

Recall a few years ago when the FBI was forced to admit that many so-called expert witnesses are just paid to say whatever the payer wants the, to say, and entire fields of criminal forensics are basically a load of made up hooey…like the study of arson and using fibers to identify people?
And these are people who are supposed to be reputable scientists, and their testimony puts actual people in jail for long periods, or incriminates them in capital cases and the accused can be put to death…or lets people walk away free!
Just made up babbling and hand waving.
After finding that out, automatically trusting anybody for any reason, if you were ever so inclined, has to go out the window.
It does not matter who it is…they may be wrong, lying, making it up…you just do not know!

IPCC AR5 “climate “scientists”” were forced to modify (cool) the mid-term model “projections” because of models’ high estimates of climate sensitivity.
I can’t wait for AR6’s treatment of climate sensitivity. The politicians and green NGOs will write the summary. Chapter authors will then spin ambiguous data with misleading charts, and bury contrary data in Supplemental Material.
IPCC and U.S. Assessment reports are all poorly written propaganda. Turgid prose is meant to obscure, not illuminate. One must interpret each word, recognizing a sell-job, not objective data.
And don’t get me started on the SJW crap; ditto socialistic sustainable fantasies.

For what it’s worth, my prediction is that over the coming 4 or 5 years, the IPCC will be forced to cut their global temperature predictions once again in the face of observational evidence falling below even their lowest projections.
This will likely coincide with both the next US presidential election, and the UK General Election.
At which point, every snarling politician with a point to make will seize upon it as proof positive that their personal, previously unannounced (naturally) scepticism of catastrophic climate change has proven correct.
Unfortunately the green left will then spin the whole AGW conundrum into AGCooling, and that they were right all along, Climate Change is happening, and it’s man’s fault, again!

There are already many past failed predictions in the indelible written record. Several essays in ebook Blowing Smoke document some of the more glaring, like malaria in NYC, no summer Arctic Ice by now, accelerating SLR, climate refugees (Tuvalu), locust plagues (literally), children won’t know snow,

Before you get too carried away with the fear of rapidly accelerating SLR, read the abstract, this sentence in particular,
“The new semiempirical model largely reconciles previous differences between semiempirical 21st century GSL projections and the process model-based projections summarized in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report.”
This is just more modeling gone crazy in support of IPCC 5th report. What does “semiempirical” mean, did they go down the shore for a clambake?
PMK

engarpia@gmail.com
And sea level rise is a problem, because?
Clearly man fears it as all the great cities are built on rivers and estuaries.
So eventually wealth will be drowned. But SLR isn’t a tsunami, it’s a gradual process, and if we’re foolish enough not to adapt to it by abandoning cities, as has been done in the past, we only have ourselves to blame.
And what’s easier, cheaper, and more logical? Gradually moving cities onto higher ground over a few hundred years, or trying to hold back a natural event, contributed to by man, or otherwise?

It appear engarpia loves big huge juicy cherries. Using 1993 is classic cherry picking. That you would even mention that paper is hilarious. And the other paper is just as hilarious. Increasing SLR coming out of the coldest periods in the Holocene …. Duh, really big cherry.

Besides which, satellites have a raft of technical issues compared with the tide gauges which show deceleration in sea level rise.
Since it has now been over 300 years since the depths of the LIA, no wonder that SLR has slowed down.

Evidently I applied enough persuasion to generate this video that attempts to debunk my debunking of climate models. But it does so by…devaluing their own models. That’s what I was trying to do too. We’re on the same page.

Perhaps Dilbert could travel to Laputa to investigate the work at the grand academy of Lagado
‘The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor’s gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me “to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers.” I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.’

Tom from Texas:
Thank you for your support.
Promotion to Climate Denialist Level 8 is a difficult and demanding one. You have to be denounced by no fewer that 10 published climate scientists. It is permitted to count Hollywood celebrities for up to 3 of those, although Hollywood celebrities who play climate scientists in the popular culture (e.g. Bill Nye) get double credit.
The Climate Denialist Promotion Board is considering other achievements such as being banned from speaking and a college or university campus, picketed while testifying before congress, subpoenaed by Senator Whitehouse, etc., but so far no decisions have been published. They also considered giving triple credit for denunciations by Alarmist icons such as Al Gore or Michael Mann, but in discussion it was noted that such cases would be quickly followed by a cascade of “me too” attacks by lesser personages and the required 10 denunciations would be easily met.
You can also get an honorary award of Level 8 for lifetime achievement, but I haven’t been at it long enough to qualify. Besides which just about everyone who qualifies on that basis has already earned it by the standard criteria.
Sadly, I will probably stay as just a Level 7. But if anyone has a pipeline to Bill Nye or Ashley Judd and can put in a bad word for me, I would be grateful.

The storm of negativity by the consensus on galloping planet greening – ‘trees cause pollution AND warming’ is similar to the campaign against the dreaded “Pause” the implications of which caused the ‘Climate Blues’ that overwhelmed a significant number of climate scientists (wasted studies, wasted careers, wasted lives which they rationalized away from).
The implications of the greening are more enormous. It’s unexpected rapid development is a carbon sink that makes an end run around the modest Henry’s Law snail’s-paced sequestration in solution in oceans that most climate scientists saw as the basic limiting actor in CO2 absorption in the envieonment. It is exponential in nature and not only does it sequester ‘carbon’ it is an endothermic reaction (cooling reaction). Moreover, phytoplankton in the oceans are considered to be even greater sinks.
Calculations of these effects (by other than I) would make a compelling thread on WUWT. Anyone?

Scott Adams has done science a considerable service. There are still a lot of people who may describe themseleves as “not a scientist” and lack the confidence to publicly call out the failure of global-warming models. Even on skeptical blogs such as this one.
They should be able to trust their own assessment that the emperor really doesn’t have a suit on. Sometimes things really are as they appear.

They believe what they say, or ar least pretend to believe. That is why warmunism is akin to a religion, impervious to contrary logic and fact. Why else take up cudgels against a simple single cartoon that exposes them fully.

words…are just words…
A proposition that supports itself. If you believe it, you – er – believe it.
“Trust me. I always tell the truth”
A proposition that results in paradox; If you believe it, you don’t believe it etc.
“Don’t trust me, I always lie”.
Thinking about Climate change reminds me of that scene in ‘Battle of Britain’ where someone queries the figures for aircraft shot down, and IIRC Downing says ‘I really can’t be bothered with propaganda, If they are right, the Germans will be walking down Whitehall in a months time, and if we are right, they won’t.’
IN this case if they are right, we will be in unsupportable warming by 2050, and we will be flooded with polar bears or something, because its already far far too late, according to their models, to do anything now.
OTOH if they are wrong, we wont be,
Either way its not worth spending any more money on.

Myhre and Mann remind me of the Empire Bureaucrat/scientist in the Foundation Trilogy (the first book, second half). While talking about how the empire was going to protect the foundation, he talked about his scientific work. What it boiled down to was that he read the work of others and never did any work of his own. This was used by Asimov to demonstrate the decay of the empire and its impending collapse.
He could just as easily have been talking about Climate science.

I remember well that bit from Foundation. Asimov was not kind to “scientists” who did not go to primary sources. I was trained to start at the beginning or do the field work myself, not rely on others who read the work of others who had read the work, then wrote about it.
PMK

First Scott Adams has a wonderful blog that talks about many things including GW….
I read this cartoon at his blog and later he posted a link to the rebuttal. As a complete denier since 09 I found it pulled a few nerves, seems legit etc etc I know the average person would go away reinforced, these folks are smart, they know the emperor has no clothes, but their livelihood is based on the narrative.
Of course, maybe they are totally brainwashed too, but they also know what happens to scientists who dare ask any of the wrong questions, as per Dilbert..

Amazing….the idiots can not see even the basics……all about climate change policy even in the global level when it comes to numbers . like Billions or Trillions in expenditure and waste of it all, all is obviously and very clearly based and driven in the interpreting, the crazy interpreting, of the GCMs numbers given……all based in the numbers given by the “Models”…..
What the f.ck these idiots are actually talking about…..do they actually have any idea or the clue when it comes to climate change policy and all the ripping off associated with it?????!!!!!
I think they do not actually, or they just happen to be a bunch of idiots given in to the stupidity of it all.
No “Models”!, how it comes to be that, when the whole numerically and other wise scam based in the most devious and intricate wrong interpretation of the “Models” that these idiots so blatantly try to dismiss now and get rid off just like that, just like that, just like it never happened, just like any other idiot down the line is bound to follow.according to the rule of idiocy , just like the next best idiot in the line……will be bound to keep doing it for ever…..hopelessly…
The prost. is clearly desperately trying a get of the Beast….isn’t it?
Hilarious…
Unbelievable that this kind of crap comes from the British amongs all….but never it stops amazing…….
Kinda of “sins of the Fathers” matter, to deal with…….a very British thing after all…
cheers

We scientists are the gatekeepers of the basic information that fuels decision making by nations, businesses and communities. As these public entities are more and more threatened by the advancing impacts of climate warming, from flooding, to water scarcity, to the spread of tropical diseases, our role as objective scientists has to change. We are so skilled at many, many detailed and quantitative tasks, but, as you would expect from a community of introverts, we are not great at shining that brilliant light back on ourselves.

and,

Many scientists began their careers with a passion for tide pools, early morning birding trips, or backyard plant dissections. These are people with unique sensitivity for the details of the natural world, who are are humbly wrapped up inside intricate problems. The verbal, argumentative skills common to professions in law, politics, or business do not come easily to most scientists.

“Hollis was always fascinated by tidepools. You know what he used to say?…That’s where life begins. Sloughs, tidepools. When he first come out here, he figured if you dumped water into the desert sand and let it percolate down to the bedrock, it would stay there instead of evaporate the way it does in most reservoirs. You only lose 20% instead of 70 or 80. He made this city.”

If the fate of Mizzou is a guide (enrollment down, alumni cancelling their endowments following its abject surrender to the SJW’s), Yale is in for trouble.
Reputations take decades or centuries to build, but can be destroyed in months or weeks.

Lots of people say stupid, wrong things. Nobody listens unless they include their educational bona fides. Then they say stupid wrong things and everybody listens.
Correction: Or if they have some notoriety as an actor.

When the Jews constructed Nehemiah’s walls around Jerusalem in 445 BCE, they completed the task in 52 days, working with a trowel in one hand & a sword in the other. Being a well paid, heavily armed, bricklayer means never having to say “Sorry, I went to Yale”.

I must say, I kept going back to the climate being “deeply unstable”. Why would make someone think that? It has been fairly stable for millions of years. During which time we have had asteroid impacts, volcanic eruptions, changes in solar output, the rise and spread of different climate altering organisms, all sorts of things have tried to “deeply disturb” the climate, to little long term effect.
Complex, chaotic, systems that are easily perturbed are never stable for any period of time. And the climate is one of the most complex, chaotic, systems we know of. To resist this chaotic complexity it MUST be deeply stable, that is, there must be numerous, redundant, compensatory mechanisms that maintain stability.

We are, in fact, in the midst of an ice age. This is an interglacial period and cooling is what we should be worried about. It could be imminent, we have no reason to believe that any amount of CO2 would prevent it and it would kill billions!

Ross –
Any chance that you could get Scott Adams to do a cartoon in which Dilbert asks them to explain all the variables that are used in the formulas in the models, and if any of the values input are guesses?

The author missed an important point.
What Scott Adams said was that irregardless of the accuracy of the climate science models, the damage caused by global warming (even if said warming does occur) is estimated using *economic* models which have no credibility whatsoever.
Thus it is actually not relevant of the climate science models are accurate or not and not strictly necessary to argue them.

A second important point missed is that climate scientists forecasting doom are actually pushing 2 models: one which they *may* have credibility in (climate) and the other which they have no credibility whatsoever (economic).

The strangest thing about the video is what it DOESN’T say. Note that most of the scientists simply talk about the increase in temperature. That’s a given. We’re not currently in an ice age, there have been ice ages in the past, therefore the temperature has increased. That doesn’t add any information we haven’t known for over 450 years.
I think the only reference to the human-caused portion of global warming is Ben Santer’s quote, and look at that closely, starting around 2:00:
“All of this is telling an internally and physically consistent story and that story is the planet is warming and despite our best attempts to see whether natural causes can explain that warming, they can’t.”
Ignore the references to stories…
He’s saying that natural causes cannot explain any of the warming. I’m sure he’d take that quote back since there are innumerable charts elsewhere showing the highs and lows. The earliest chart in this presentation starts in 1950.

https://xkcd.com/1732/
The temperature for the last several thousand years that we can prove / find on record has never spiked up more than maybe 1 degree every 1000+ years. Since the industrial revolution, it has spiked one degree. This is why most who believe in human-caused climate change is human caused – the onset of industrial revolution happened to coincide with the start of the spike. Looking at data from JUST the data from 1950 (as you say) and not comparing it with what we know before would definitely lead me to the same conclusion as you.
Where do you think this 1 degree / 100 years vs 1 degree / 1000+ years comes from?

Somewhere on the contorted mental pathways that lead to modeling as a form of insanity comes this recent tasty morsel:
Assimilation of pseudo-tree-ring-width observations into an atmospheric general circulation model
Walter Acevedo, Bijan Fallah, Sebastian Reich, and Ulrich Cubasch
Clim. Past, 13, 545-557, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-13-545-2017, 2017
So, here we use fake tree ring data to stock up a GCM and run it. Imagine all that can be “learned” from such an exercise.
OMG do we need an ice age!!!!

I think that is spelled LBGTQ2 (seriously). As it is, that should be a 1, not an i, correct? What does it mean?
The always inclusive Mark Steyn uses LBGTQWERTY to cover every possible ‘lifestyle’. I am pleased to hear that Dr M is ‘speaking up for science’. I am sure she will not mind if we contribute a little ‘gap-filling’ to this (our) honorable cause.

We need a new metric for pollution of the discussion space by poor analysis and bad judgement, hubris unsupported by conclusions not derived from first principles and socio-political contaminants that obscure useful facts.
I am definitely not in favour of saying that people are themselves contaminants, tempting as that base motive is. It is the pollution we should worry about, not which mouth which spits it out.
One of the popular pollution measurements of pollution is PM2.5 (particles smaller than 2.5 microns and usually taken to mean larger than 0.1 microns because they are often measured optically). So what is the intellectual equivalent of PM2.5?
One possibility is PHd as distinct from PhD.
PhD stands for Philosophy Doctorate, because at that level one is supposed to be philosophizing about a subject of which you are already a master. A doctorate in engineering is still a philosophy degree.
So a PHd means “Piled Higher and deeper” and refers to the piling of more intellectual dung on the existing intellectual manure pile. I am proposing a PHd of the Week award for the most egregious contribution to the pile, the effect of which is to hide from the general public the truth about and compromise the understanding of the climate and our possible effects on it.
There is a parallel for this which may be useful. I just attended the Black Carbon Summit in Warsaw co-sponsored by the ICCI, CCAC and GACC which focussed on BC emissions caused by home heating in regions that burn coal and wood (cold countries). One of the attendees is the head of the Alliance for Green Heat, an eminently sensible organisation based in the US which promotes efficient and very clean burning of biomass. They have a monthly newsletter in which they highlight the worst example of misleading advertising they can find, from ads pushing one or another heating product (typically wood stoves). They do this to make it more and more difficult to push in front of the public outrageous or impossible claims for performance or cost.
It is a really good idea. It is cheap, effective, and brings the public awareness up to a level that they might start to be skeptical about over-reach and hubris. We could, here, award an article (not a person) a PHd for piling the crap even higher than it already is.
For this week, I nominate the video feature which is the topic of this post. The CNN piece today advancing the claim that the USA is losing its leadership role on ‘climate’ (as if it was ever a leader) by trying to embarrass your Prez to sign the Paris Accord and ram it through the Senate, somehow. You will have to wear a CNN-class nucleopore snark filter or you will be rendered senseless by the concentration level so be careful to tape your gloves. I encourage you to see it and judge whether or not it is worse and less balanced than the tripe in the video.
Vote here by Sunday midnight, local.

Crispin, Here in BC we have the man who turned me into a skeptic, Dr. Andrew Weaver. His vividly imaginative climate hyperbole makes him an ongoing contender for the award. I truly wish we had McIntyre instead.

So I’m kind of curious. Let’s assume Climate Change is absolutely wrong, bad and terrible and all that.
Have you seen Beijing / China on a good day (and not during the olympics where they basically had to shut down a good portion of the city)? Do you want your cities to look like this? Have you heard of the Great Smog of 1952 that occurred in London, UK?
Do any of you have the balls to say the massive amounts of smog aren’t caused by Carbon burning emissions?
Even if we weren’t modifying the global climate, do you support wrecklessly modifying your local ecosystem?

You fail to grasp the difference between real, old-fashioned pollution and plant food.
China’s bad air is caused not because of their reliance on coal, but because they burn their own cheap, dirty, low-BTU content coal without scrubbing it of S and other reducing particulates and soot. It doesn’t have to be that way.
But in any case, CO2 is an essential trace gas. Earth has had about 20 times as much in its air in the current eon. It’s not pollution.

Not the least bit impressed with your engineering background. I’ve been tracking crank science for fifty years, and long before climate change, 9/11 or the Internet, I noticed a striking pattern. Whenever someone with a “scientific” background pushed crackpot science, the odds were overwhelming that he was an engineer or industrial scientist. They were in the thick of the Velikovsky revival in the 1970’s, heavily represented among the technical advisers of the Institute for Creation Research, and make up a big chunk of the Apollo Moon Hoax movement.
Distortion of credentials is rampant. A while back I had a go-round with a 9/11 truther who assured me his engineering background made it certain the Twin Towers were brought down in a controlled demolition. I looked the guy up. He was an architect whose experience was renovating one and two-story buildings. I wonder what his state licensing board would think of him calling himself an “engineer.”
But all that “practical” experience must count for something. Often it means the individual has spent a career solving a narrow range of problems. And very often “practical” means “lousy theoretical background.” Velikovsky believed the planets careened around like Pachinko balls. Creationists believe radioactive decay can vary wildly in rate. How lousy a theoretical background do you have to have to support theories like those?
The last hurrah of opposition to plate tectonics came from “practical” petroleum geologists. One of them, editor of a major journal, simply threw quality control out the window and published some of the worst crap ever published in a major professional journal. I was in grad school where a lot of people were actively involved in proving plate tectonics, and their response to this stuff was “Can you believe this $***?”
And if you’re about to get all professionally indignant, be sure and include a reference to something you wrote in a professional publication objecting to this sort of professional misconduct. Because otherwise, this is about YOU.

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